Familiar Frustrations (Warriors 101, Jazz 115)

If the Warriors play defense over the next 29 games like they did Tuesday night in Utah, they’re not making the playoffs. It doesn’t matter how many games they play at home or how potent their offense may become. The Warriors’ 101-115 loss was a throwback performance — a return to the depressingly futile teams of yesteryear that were unable to string two stops together, and therefore utterly irrelevant to any playoff discussion. There’s still time for this Warriors team to break out of its losing ways, but there’s little evidence over the past six losses that they’re making progress in addressing the most pressing problems.

Not every Warriors player was an unmitigated defensive disaster — just 7 of the 9 in Mark Jackson’s rotation. The two exceptions to the Warriors’ defensive mediocrity were bit players. Andris Biedrins made the most of his 16 minutes, logging 6 fouls, but also did a decent job adjusting to contest the shots of the Jazz’s big men. Harrison Barnes similarly played limited minutes (19) and wasn’t a total disaster on the defensive end — generally staying with his man and making crisp rotations. Everyone else was a liability.

David Lee repeatedly failed to extend on shooters and was caught flat footed when players drove at him — delivering all the downside of playing off his man with none of the upside. Milsap repeatedly knocked down shots over him; Favors worked him over deeper in the paint. Lee was often lost in transition, jogging down the court with no awareness of where his man or the ball was relative to him. There were a few plays where he was slow to get back or rotate because he was too busy protesting some perceived injustice to the refs. If Popovich had seen this performance before the All Star game, Lee might have never made it off the bench.

Andrew Bogut looked slow and unable to move laterally. He successfully forced his man under the basket several times, only to be too slow adjusting to stop an easy step-in lay-up. He failed to stop penetration when the Warriors guards let their men go into the center of the key. He wasn’t even close to blocking a shot all night long. Big, offensively-gifted front-line players like Jefferson and Milsap were supposed to be the guys Bogut would slow down. At least on Tuesday night, they had an easy time, going a collective 16-28 from the field. Bogut looks a little worse each game he plays — not a little bit better. It’s an alarming trend.

Klay Thompson spent large portions of the game unsure whether to drop into the lane to provide help defense or stick with his man on the perimeter. So he split the difference — hanging too close to his man to create any meaningful double-team pressure but also too far to do anything other than lunge when a shot went up. Thompson wasn’t alone in his poor spacing, but his passivity on defense was alarming. At least when Jack or Curry over-helped, they fully committed and exerted some real pressure on the ball. Thompson just seemed hesitant, with no instinct for where to be when the team slipped into zone.

Stephen Curry’s defense was better than that of the three players listed above, but was still a long way from where it needs to be. He repeatedly over-helped, collapsing into the key to swipe at the ball but leaving his own man open. The Jazz’s backcourt fortunately didn’t do too much damage — they were too busy feeding the big men for quality looks — but Curry’s bad habits will cause problems against teams with better shooters. And it’s not as if collapsing into the key did anything to slow down the Jazz, who shot 50% from the field and earned 33 trips to the line.

Carl Landry, like many of the Warriors, needs to be scoring to compensate for the points he’s giving up through average or below defense. His defense Tuesday against Milsap, Jefferson and Favors wasn’t awful, but it also didn’t do anything to increase the difficulty of their looks. At the other end, Landry was an afterthought — getting only 4 field goal attempts in 18 minutes. The Warriors didn’t sign Landry to be a passive offensive player. The team made no effort to establish his post game, so the Jazz big men got away with not having to expend energy on defense.

Jarrett Jack’s defensive glitches tend to be more symptomatic of the Warriors’ grinding gears as a team than any individual mistakes. Although Jack drops into the paint to provide help a bit too much, the major breakdowns occur when one of the other Warriors will switch while Jack attempts to stay with his man. Often a crowd develops around Jack’s man because he’s not expecting the new Warriors defender to stick around. As a result, Jack is often left to make a last-second adjustments to cover wide open men that other Warriors abandoned. The challenging question is what Jack should do in these situations. Should he switch more to accomodate weaker defenders like Curry, Thompson and Lee? Or should he stick with his man and, in doing so, tear apart the Warriors’ switching approach?

Draymond Green ends up on this list not for effort, but purely for results. Mark Jackson put him in an untenable position late in the game guarding Jefferson, often in the post. While Green is fantastic on stretch fours, give his ability to close out quickly, he’s at a significant disadvantage against players who have the strength and length to post him up. Green did an admirable job fighting back against the Jazz’s post-feeding, but the end results were sadly predictable.

The Warriors’ loss is a perfect example of why their offense alone won’t be enough to beat good teams on a consistent basis. The Warriors shot 47% from the field, had 5 more offensive rebounds than the Jazz and only turned the ball over two times more — but they still never led in the game because they couldn’t slow down the Jazz’s inside/out attack. Jefferson, Milsap and Favors did damage down below, and the Jazz’s shooters hit 47.6% of their looks from behind the arc. The embarrassingly high percentage for corner threes against the Warriors continued as well, with the Jazz connecting on 6 of 9 by my unofficial count. It didn’t matter that Curry and Lee combined to go 21-35 from the field — the Jazz simply traded baskets with them and usually had far easier looks.

The next ten days may be the most important of the Warriors’ regular season. The team is in a nasty slump. Jackson has given lip service to shaking things up, but is still rolling out the same line-up for major minutes. No Warriors player has elevated his game to help pull the Warriors out of this hole. The only consistent focus and intensity on the court right now is coming from Jarrett Jack — a back-up being asked to play the role of superstar. Curry and Lee are making too many mistakes and lack any sense of urgency. Bogut, Thompson and Barnes will make a nice play here or there, then disappear into long stretches without any noticeable positive impact on the game.

While the team’s early season wins may give them a sense of security, it’s a false one. There’s a bit of a gulf between the 8th and 9th team at the moment, but it could disappear quickly. If the Warriors go 3-7 over the next 10 games and the Lakers go 7-3, the two teams would be separated by 1 win in the standings. The final 20 games of the season could be spent neck-and-neck with the Lakers and maybe Portland for the final playoff spot. Even with the schedule working in their favor, that’s a fight to the finish the Warriors would very much like to avoid.